"They really thought it was a good idea to build such an intensive prison in the middle of this town?"

"Nien, this town ist, eh-"

"Nyet, other way around, Stone. The town has been built around the prison. Five years ago all this did not exist."

"Ja, ist as Commander Sasha says."

"Looks, uh, deserted."

"Da, no civilians live here. Only guards. The prison is for guards as much as prisoners themselves."

"Commander, this place, ist it as bad as we have been lead to believe?"

"Seven layers. Deeper you go, the worse it gets. EU imprisons anyone they think dangerous here. They do, horrible experiments. For once, we are the good guys, ha ha!"

A woman, marred by horrible scars that forced her face into a twisted, unnatural grin, rapped her knuckles upon the stock of an older Kalashnikov while she laughed. Five other arms twisted around performing various small tasks, making coffee, loading ammo, and cleaning out a small filtration mask. She was codenamed 'The Cleaner,' and lead squad 13. In her ranks she counted a few of the most talented and calm men she ever had the pleasure of working with. They are as follows: Firstly, their primary combat worker was a large man with a curling moustache, nicknamed 'Thumper.' The man, of German descent and ethnicity, could create shockwaves through his fist powerful enough to simulate earthquakes. Secondarily, 'Stone,' a Swede with a great grasp of English and whose abilities turned his flesh to stone. Not necessarily as powerful but doubly necessary for their job. Their third and fourth members didn't speak much, and Sasha liked it that way. Lastly, a wife and her husband, nicknamed Jaegar.' The two were capable of powerful empathetic and telekinetic ability when together. Sasha theorized that they were, perhaps, telepathically linked. However, as it was not her place to ask, she did not pry.

They were one of seven squad deployed from Institute 22 in Russia. Orders from the Kremlin deployed to the other squads read as follows, "Infiltrate the prison VIA frontal assault, free trapped prisoners. Use force with extreme prejudice." It was just like them to be so direct. Just as the others, Sasha's squad had been given the same orders, but with an addendum from Institute 22 themselves. "Travel down to the final floor, release the 'Eldritch Eye' hidden in the maze. Utilize Stone for contact, Jaegar for pacification, and Thumper to clear a path. Sasha, establish safe contact and bring the 'Eye' to London where it is to be released."

It was not Sasha's place to guess the thoughts and intentions of the Institute, but she could safely theorize about their target. It was most definitively a super weapon of some kind, very likely intelligent and violent. She had reached out to her contacts for further information, but the only thing remaining of this 'Eldritch Eye' was a superhero registration certificate from six years ago, back before the EU started imprisoning anyone who showed powers too dangerous to allow them to be seen by the public. Standing, Sasha checked her watch. The time read 6:30 pm. Pointing her Kalashnikov towards the sky, Sasha and open fired and sent six rounds straight into the sky.

The sound of the gunfire echoed throughout the empty town and valley below. Silence did not permeate, however, as seconds later gunfire from all directions echoed into the sky. The other squads were ready. Sasha turned to their German friend and spoke, "Signal is given. Other squads ready. Shake them up." Thumper, smiling, clenched his fists and hit the ground.

------------------------------------------------Inside the Prison-------------------------------------------
A short, balding, skinny man in an immaculate white coat lead a small group of American Justice Capes around the hallway of the First Level of Errësi, the EU's 'secret' prison for Capes. The entire building, over twenty stories high and quarter mile in diameter, was stark white and spotlessly clean on the inside. Everything, from the floors to the lights to the doors and walls were all kept an unnatural, terrifying white. It would be so easy to lose track of night and day cycles inside. In addition, the deceptively small interior on display betrayed dozens of areas the Capes were simply not allowed to enter or know about. But these things they could not dwell on for long, they had just arrived and their 'tour guide' did not stop nor answer any questions.

"This is the primary level. We don't keep any prisoners up here. Mostly it's used for our scientists to do experiments and for prisoner exchanges. All experiments are performed ethically under the articles of the New Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of Mutants, Evolved Humans, and all other Supers and Capes of various abilities. In the middle of the building is our primary elevator for transporting prisoners, and every wall is, at minimum, a three foot thick composite of steel and concrete with an outer layer of plastic. You will not be going downstairs as the prisoners you have been sent to retrieve will be brought up to you."

Growling, the man began a short rant as he kept walking. His speech only interrupted by a few ragged breaths and him stopping to check door numbers.

"What I cannot understand is why you have been ordered to stay here for the entire week. It takes less than three hours to prepare a prisoner for transport, but the American Justice Association dropped you off and we have our orders. These rooms are where you will be staying for the night. There are no clocks here and your cellular devices will not work, so please make sure your watches are correct as of this moment. It is 3:45 pm, Wednesday, November 30th. Here-"

Finally finding the correct hallway, the short man pointed down what appeared to be a dead end, curved hallway with seven doors on a single side. Sighing, he finished speaking, "You may decide which room belongs to who, each is identical and will be cleaned by a maid promptly at 7am every morning. Dinner will be served at 6pm and ends at 7pm, we will see you then." At that, he left.

The hallway was cold, made even colder by their hosts attitude toward their assignment. Not like it was any of their faults they were there. Pyro snorted quietly as the man began to rant against their presence in the prison. The girl had to bite her tongue to keep her sharp temper in check. There was no way she was going to get into it with a scientist who performed experiments on the altered, especially not with Witch present.

She shook her head, flipping her curls out of her eyes impatiently as they walked further into the massive prison. She turned to fire off a question about what kind of work they performed, but the "doctor" kept going, not stopping for their inquisitions. They finally arrived at a tow of rooms, to which he indicated they could pick whichever. After announcing the time for dinner, he turned and started away, but Sally was far from satisfied. She turned to follow after him, arms barely crossed over the thick coat she had drawn over her latex suit.

"Excuse me. I have some questions about the facility, given that they expect us to stay here for a week. I dont suppose you would mind slowing down and actually having a conversation, would you?"

At Sally’s words, the scientist stopped and pivoted to face her. It was at this moment that his name tag was finally fully visible. ‘Abram Johannasen.’ It read. A forced grin on his face, he threw up his hands and replied,

“Of course! Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I drew the short straw and my research as been put on hold until you all leave!“

Crossing his arms, he leaned against the wall and muttered ‘jävla amerikaner’ under his breathe. While he seemed thoroughly upset by his predicament, he did not storm off. This, if nothing else, betrayed his resignation to answer the Cape’s questions.

Her lower eye twitched once and she forced a smile onto her face in return, the expression invoking the imagery of a dog about to bite. "I see..."

She shifted slightly and rested her hands on her hips. The air around her had grown warmer by a few degrees in a sudden flux of heat. "Just tell me about the security. I want to be looped in. If we're going to be here for a week, I want to know the ins and outs of your entire set up."

Abram laughed. It was a biting, sarcastic laugh forced from the mouth of someone who detested the reason why they were laughing. Catching his breathe, he responded,

“The ins and outs of our entire setup? Are you out of your damn mind? This is why no one likes you Americans, always coming in like you own the place and expecting special treatment. You things are worthless and frankly, even if you weren’t a ‘Cape’ I still wouldn’t tell you a damn thing. The only people who get to know anything about our security are the people who work security. Hell even I don’t know half of how security operates around here, and I’m assistant chief of Alteration Testing!”

Rubbing his eyes to denote his annoyance, Abram continued to lean against the wall.

There was rush of heat as a wave raised off of Pyro's skin. The air shimmered for a moment before a hand gently laid across her shoulder and a voice whispered through her mind. She took a deep breath and placed her palm over the top of her partner's, squeezing it as she reigned in her temper.

"I will warn you once. If you speak to any of us like that again, we will not be responsible for the outcome. We're just doing our jobs. Maybe you should do the same. I believe that includes answer my question as thoroughly as you are able or directing me to the appropriate person."

Smiling at the ‘threat’ from Pyro, Abrams threw up his hands in mock surrender and replied,

“Oh no, the American Cape is warning me now? What ever will I do?”

Pointing to a very small black dot on the wall, he continued,

“If only there were cameras in every room watching everyone’s every move inside this prison designed to hold the Altered! Then I would be safe! Hahaha!”

His voice and tone changed to one of cruel laughter as he finished his rant,

“No one would ever be able to find you. So keep your thinly veiled threats to yourself. The head of Security is the only one who could answer your questions, and he’s occupied with more important things. Those things being not you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for dinner.”

You've been bitten by a true believer
You've been bitten by
someone who's hungrier than you
You've been bitten by
someone's false beliefs

Alice slipped her hand off Sally's shoulder, stepping forward to break the distance between her and the man. Even visibly calmed, waves of anger still radiated from the girl, mingling with the feeling of tense unease that pervaded the entire compound. This was not a happy place. Tension so thick, it felt like one wrong word could snap it and shatter the air around them.

"Your work must not be too terribly urgent," she replied in a soft, cheerful tone, "if they allowed you time away from it to deal with us nuisances."

Not helping with the tension, but she wanted to say it anyway. Maybe it would help calm Sally down vicariously. She turned to the other girl, lip curled slightly.

Do you really think he's worth your anger? A thought sent between them. He's taunting you, you know. Leading you on. And every time you snap back, you're just feeding into his ideas about us.

She gave the man a wider smile.

"I apologize for my partner's rashness, Dr. Johannasen. She didn't realize the obvious inconvenience you've taken on, and didn't think to treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve. Assistant Chief of Alteration Testing must be a very important position, yes? One step away from the Chief Scientist himself, and if I know my power ladders, they just sit around giving orders while you pull all the hard work. Middle management is a thankless job."

For anyone other than Sally, Alice's tone was candid, colloquial. The echo projected into her partner's head, however, was dripping with sarcasm.

I look in the water and fear what I see
I know it's no stranger but I know it's not me
My life is a lie that was uttered in jest
If I can't change at all, let me rest

Abram Johannasen, at first, gave the other woman only a passing glance. Some shred of humanity within him kept him from storming off, a feeling that it would be rude to simply leave during the middle of the conversation. Despite the way he looked at these, things, he nevertheless felt obligated to allow the conversation to come to a more natural conclusion than the childish tantrum he had allowed it to devolve into. It seemed this darker skinned woman had a far more level head that her companion, and Abram gave her more and more of his attention as she continued to speak. Smiling, he made as if to speak but was stopped.

A seven foot tall man with the body of a monster-thinly hidden beneath what appeared to be a clean pressed officer's uniform-stepped in front of the smaller man. His feet were bare, appearing abnormally large and elongated, similar to a gazelle, with sharp blades protruding from his three toes and from his calves. His right side appeared normal, but his left resembled one fluid mass of muscles and knives, subtly pulsating and flowing like a heart pumping blood. As if that were not enough, his head was graced with seven eyes where his hair should have been on his bald head.

Looking down upon Abram, the monster commanded in a voice that resembled the sound of growling wolf, "Doctor, go assist with the meal preparation. You are on probation, do not forget this." Abrams scurried away without a word as the monster's scalp eyes watched. All eyes turned to the two women and the beast bowed gently in introduction, "Good Afternoon, I am Head of Security Shimada Goto. You may refer to me as Mr. Shimada. You must be Pyro and Witch, I have read your files, you are both very powerful. This is a comfort to me. Please do not be perturbed by our staff, they are not accustomed to the Altered. I find even myself, an artificial Altered, to be intimidating to them. Dinner will begin soon, would you like a tour in the meantime?"

There was a kind of bemused contentment on Pyro's face as her girlfriend stepped forward and fronted her ass off. The woman's voice echoed through her head, the last few words trailing off just as a great shadow fell over the pair.

Her eyes trailed up... and up. And finally stopped as they met the man's own... only to continue moving as she tried to decide which pair to star into. The mans head was just covered in eyes, and they were all focused and Witch and her. It took her a moment to catch up to what Mr. Shimada had said, and once it did she blinked herself out of her stupor and gave a lopsided grin.

"I mean, if you're offering, I'd definitely appreciate it. I'd like to know as much as you can tell me about this place."

She wasted no time stepping forward and turning to wink at her partner, offering a hand for her to take. She felt herself ease back up, the tension draining slightly. There was no doubt she was still on gaurd, but she was allowing herself to appear as though she wasnt.

"I'm so disappointed in you." - Annasiel, 2017

You've been bitten by a true believer
You've been bitten by
someone who's hungrier than you
You've been bitten by
someone's false beliefs

Mr.Shimada flashed a quick, fake grin. His teeth, visible for less than a second, seemed to improperly join together and flow back in rows. Turning, he led the pair back down the hallway they originally traversed. Stopping at one of the many white doors the group passed along the way, Goto placed his hand on a small bio-scanner and waited as the light slowly accessed his biometrics in order to match it to the system. With a soft 'beep' the white door slide aside to reveal a very large, although equally white as the rest of the building, spotlessly clean elevator. Inside were small stools for sitting and various refreshments on tables. At the opposite end of the elevator was a large, open glass wall facing the 'inside' of the prison. After allowing the ladies to step on first, Mr. Shimada entered after them.

Once more, he placed his palm on a bio-scanner inside the elevator in order to access floor traversal. With a far louder 'beep,' the elevator shook and began moving. Goto gestured towards the refreshments and offered them to the pair, "Coffee, tea, and soft drinks if you would like are available. We take our investors and European Union MEPs through this elevator here usually, so it is kept freshly stocked. This prison is organized in 'layers' with each layer consisting of exactly twenty floors, or 'stories,' and each one being of approximately 76 meters in 'height.' In total, there are seven Layers. Layer one, the 'surface' layer is where we work. We conduct experiments and manage the prison from there. Layers two and three are were criminals are kept, such as murderers, serial rapists, and gang organizers who possess various abilities and mutations."

As the elevator moved down, an electronic voice would periodically speak every ten floors traveled down. As Goto continued speaking, it informed the group of having hit floor sixty. The lights changed immediately here, the previous floors, bathed in sterilized white, gave way to dark tones of black titanium and a terrifying obsidian alloy. Whereas the roofs had been bare before, here there seemed to be no corner where automated turrets did not spin ominously. Machines patrolled the halls and terrible monsters in guard uniformed transferred themselves from cell door to cell door. Goto seemed to not noticed the change as his tone remained level. "Layers four through six house both more dangerous criminals and people who possess particularly dangerous abilities to both themselves and others. I understand that in America, things are done differently, but here in the EU we contain those whose abilities might run rampant and out of control in order to keep the general public safe. You may disagree, but we find it better to contain those who might become a problem in the future before they decide to begin hurting others. What is it american's say? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"

The elevator stops at floor one hundred, twenty and Mr. Shimada takes a seat. The eyes atop his head close and he crosses his arms to rest, sighing deeply as he does so. As if rattling off statistics about farming, he described the absolute state of the prison. "In Layers two and three, we employ over eight thousand security personnel who guard, care for, and oversee half as many prisoners. We occasionally open the roof of Layer one in order to allow sunshine to reach the prisoners, but we are forced to seal off Layer three from Layers four and below. Down here, we employ mostly artificially altered personnel-similar to myself- machines, and systems in order to keep ten thousand dangerous individuals in check. We are slowly diminishing the number of prisoners kept down here, but it's painstakingly slow work. The prisoners down here never leave their cells, so we keep them in groups of three to four in order to keep them sane. They read books, have tea, and are well taken care of. We rotate them every week in order to keep plans of escape to a minimum, and it is rare that escape is attempting.

"Escape attempts always end in tragedy, so we attempt to pacify the prisoners using soft musics and occasional announcements in the intercom systems. Intercoms run through every room and every cell down here, except Layer seven. Every guard, machine, and automated turret is armed with Depleted Utagri rounds, ah, Utagri is a small substance we've developed and are currently testing here. It's a simple bio organism that, when sterilized, acts like an acid to 100% of mutants exposed to it so far. We've tested it with other abilities as well and, in most circumstances, it can nullify them when utilized in the correct manner. Although it's still undergoing testing, we've coated the inside of the walls of the cells down here with a living culture of Utagri and it appears to deter escape attempts by tunneling so far."

Reaching out, Mr. Shimada made as to reactivate the elevator to take the trio back up. They had seen the whole of the prison by now, and the clock read 5:00.

Alice flashed Sally back a quick smirk of her own, taking the girl's hand and squeezing it tightly. She was uncomfortable. Uneasy. They both were, in truth, but there was no reason to let Sally know that. It'd only worry her more.

As they stepped into the elevator and began to descend, however, Witch's resolve descended with it. Something here was wrong, and the lower they went, the worse it felt. She couldn't quite put a finger on it -- a sense of fear, that tension from before, and a feeling deeper and more insidious than either. The man's constant monologue didn't help, congenial as it seemed. She trusted him less than the scientist from before. At least the scientist seemed honest.

Almost instinctively, Alice busied herself, preparing a cup of tea. Her eyes never left the cup even after she'd filled it to the brim, though it was currently far too hot to drink.

"We certainly do it very differently in America," she said quietly. Wave after wave of nausea with every floor, redoubled for each chimed voice after sixty.

This place is bad, Sally. Don't trust anyone you talk to. We shouldn't have come here.

Slowly, she tested a sip of the tea. Dark and smokey, and still painfully warm, but the pain was good here. It was grounding.

"The people down here have done nothing wrong," Alice continued, taking another hot sip. "Do you ever deal with public backlash? Or am I wrong to think the public knows about this at all?"

Even if they did, if the climate here is any indication, they might not care. They might even encourage it.

I look in the water and fear what I see
I know it's no stranger but I know it's not me
My life is a lie that was uttered in jest
If I can't change at all, let me rest

There was something about the air of this place, something about the elevator, that made Sally’s stomach turn. She could feel the wrongness in the air, and the more that Mr. Shimada spoke, the more she felt as though she might be sick. While she was known in America for her no shits attitude and her fierce methods, the girl wasn’t a stranger to compassion and empathy. In fact, her ability to empathize was higher than any other super that she and Alice had met yet, and as such, she found she couldn’t speak. What kind of response could she give to such a treatment of innocent lives? She wanted to be sick, or to hurt everyone who worked at this facility. She heard Witch’s voice echo through her mind, and could only reply with a wave of confusion, nausea, and anger. This could have been them.

It only briefly occurred to her that Witch’s psychic voice seemed more distant than it should have. She didn’t spend time processing this, however, because Shimada continued on to talk about Utagri, and it took all Pyro had not to blaze up in anger. They used acid on innocent supers?? She screamed in her head, reaching out to hold onto Witch, her hands showing just the smallest tremor. She had to contain her anger, her disgust, or she and her partner could be in serious danger. She wasn’t going to allow Alice to be in danger because of her own actions. Swallowing down the nausea that rose in her throat was hard, but she managed it.

You've been bitten by a true believer
You've been bitten by
someone who's hungrier than you
You've been bitten by
someone's false beliefs